Principal Secretary (Information Technology) to Telangana government Jayesh Ranjan on Thursday underscored the need for discussion on various issues that remain in the way of greater adoption of digital payments technology.
The less than desired response to T-Wallet, which was launched about three months ago, as well as the preference of people for the cash payment mode, raised very interesting questions on why digital technologies were not getting adopted at a faster pace and at a volume expected, he said.
A digital payment solution developed with the State government’s effort, T-Wallet has 50,000-60,000 users so far. This comes as a big surprise, he added.
One of the questions to be addressed was whether there was failure in creating a sense of security, given that people had been dealing in hard cash for all these years.
“Everything happens before your eyes,” he said, pointing to the preference for cash mode. Whereas in digital payments, “things do not happen immediately before your eyes. That weighs in the minds of the users, especially those who are not technologically savvy.”
Mr. Ranjan, who was addressing a seminar on ‘Adopting ICT solutions for digital growth and transformation’ organised by the industry body FICCI, said there was also need to study whether the nominal charges associated with digital payments were a reason behind people preferring cash.
For technology initiatives to be taken to the common man, a lot of issues need to be debated and discussed by forums such as the seminar, he said.